Play the Game
by taylortighten
Summary: Two years after the death of Sherlock, John receives strange- and ominous- mail. With clues that are all too familiar, can John save his new life from getting mixed in with his old?


So this was originally a fanfic that got edited for a class assignment, and now back into a fanfic. If there are any name flubs or comments that don't make complete sense, blame my teacher for not accepting fic!

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It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. A wrong caller that persisted, at all hours, asking again and again for the same person. Calls had turned into letters, dripping with odd comments and thinly veiled threats.

"Hey Addison, mail's here. Can you get it? My hands are a bit full." John called out to his wife, wrinkling his nose as water splashed at his face. He heard and 'okay' come from the kitchen, followed by the clicking of heels and the sound of the door. Distracted by more splashing water, John grinned and turned his attention away from the post.

"John," He heard something set on the table. "You've got a parcel here." Addison told him, her small voice carrying through the house.

"Who from?" He asked, pulled the drain plug and letting the shallow pool of water leave the tub before grabbing a plush green towel from next to him and wrapping it around the small body in the tub.

"No return address," His wife simply stated as he walked into the living room with a squirming, wet toddler. "Here, I'll take Rosemary for her nap." John nodded, kissing the top of the little girl's blond head before handing her over and picking up the discarded envelope. It was manila, the handwriting was vaguely familiar, and just as Addison had said, there was no return address. It was small enough to fit through the mail slot, yet it had been left on the doorstep. Odd.

The parcel wasn't very heavy, and it didn't feel like it had a fixed shape. He hadn't ordered anything, and even if he had, it wouldn't have been handwritten. And it would have had a return address or at the very least, the sender's name. There was a small, red wax seal on the back, holding it closed. Definitely familiar, but the doctor couldn't place it.

Sliding a finger under the lip, John could feel the thick paper scratch a small tear into his skin, but the paper cut was so small that the drop of blood got lost in the color of the wax stamp. Something small and grainy slid over his fingers and spilled onto the table.

"Sand?" Addison was back, frowning at the mess her husband was making on her freshly cleaned table. The doctor mashed and rolled the contents between two fingers before tensely putting the pieces in his mouth.

"Breadcrumbs." Familiar wasn't the proper word anymore. No, this was more than familiar. Hauntingly so.

His mind was switching to overdrive. The manila letter left on his doorstep, the handwriting, the wax seal, the breadcrumbs, they all pointed to one hazy memory.

"Remember me?"

"Excuse me?" Addison's voice startled him from his thoughts, forcing him to blink back into reality.

"The note, in with the breadcrumbs, it says 'remember me?' See here." Handing over the small white sheet, he spotted the two simple words in the exact same handwriting as was on the front of the envelope. Two simple words that made his heart race like it hadn't done in years.

"Bloody hell." That's all he could say. All he could feel.

"John, what is this? Breadcrumbs and this note?" She didn't sound very worried, but the look in her eyes and the way they bore into her husband's exposed how very deep her nerves went. How in the world was he going to explain this? 'Oh, nothing, just a psychopath who ruined my life'. He hadn't told her anything about that time of his life; about the old threats he had lived through with his old flatmate. The doctor winced, a flash of memory haunting the dark behind his eyelids.

"A mix up." He told her absently, focusing all of his strength to not tear up the letter and toss it in the waste bin. That wouldn't do any good.

"But John, it's got your name on it, and our address. What's this got anything to do with?" Addison frowned, obviously working hard to put together the very limited pieces she had to a very large puzzle. "Or, wait, you told me something about an old flatmate that died?"

"Don't you ask about him." He growled, collecting up the breadcrumbs and shoveling them into the manila folder, where they came from.

"Johnny, darling, I just don't understand this message-"

"Rubbish. It's just rubbish, Addison, a sick joke. Now go get the baby monitor from our room, would you please?" John was getting a migraine, and his wife's high-pitched voice wasn't going to be of any help.

John needed space, he needed to think. What arse would send this to him? Who even bloody knew about it? The Met did- at least a few of the officers did. But they weren't stupid enough to let out that information to anyone disgusting enough to use it.

That left him with no answers. The original writer was dead, considering there had been his blood and brain matter left up on the rooftop. Even if his body was never found, they had that evidence. Maybe one of the officers still at the station knew something, or at least could help him figure out if these were real threats.

Within half an hour, John was pacing at the front desk of Scotland Yard, repeating that he needed to talk with Detective Inspector Lestrade.

"I know he still works here, and I know he'll remember me." He told the woman behind the desk, stopping to glare at her.

"That's all fine, Mr. Watson, but he's in a meeting right now, and he wont be out for at least another hour-"

"Blast it, this is important!" He interrupted, barely keeping from smashing his fist into the desktop. "Bloody hell, if you wont let me see him, at least tell him I stopped by. It's about two murders he worked ages ago. I need him to phone me, as soon as possible, yeah?"

Temper flaring as the woman waved him off, John left in a huff, mumbling all the way out about the incompetence of people.

He was halfway home when he realized he had the envelope full of breadcrumbs shoved into his coat pocket. The rest of his walk was dedicated to the examining of the package and its contents, picking up every little detail and comparing it to what he could recall from his past.

The manila envelope itself was very familiar, but it was so common on parcels that it didn't have any significance. But the wax seal, on the other hand, that was unique and without a doubt the signature of this man. Upon a closer look, the smaller details of the seal became more noticeable, from the cross-topped crown to the custom red Cire Souple wax. Engraved at the very bottom of the crown, a tiny 'JM'. A special ordered monogrammed wax coin. The handwriting on the front was surely an exact match to the addressing on the old post.

Not a bit of that was any help. John and the Met already knew that Jim Moriarty was the psychopath; that he had made the wax press himself, left the mail on the doorstep himself, created the dangers that were left inside.

If Jim Moriarty was ruled out, there were no suspects left.

Back at the flat, there was another manila letter sitting on the dining table, waiting for him. Rosemary was sitting on the table beside it, Addison braiding her hair.

"It arrived while you were out," She told him, already knowing the question that was on the tip of his tongue. "Same sender, whomever that may be."

John simply nodded, taking a short breath and holding it as he slit open the second note. Small candies fell out and plunked onto the table, empty wrappers catching on the lip of the envelope. Chocolates in gold and silver packaging. Rosemary scrambled, trying to close her little fingers around the treats before her father could notice, but his sharp eyes caught her and he snatched them away before she could get near to them.

"These aren't for you, Rosemary." He scolded, shoving them back into the paper only to notice he had missed something when he first dumped the package.

One o'clock, Regent's Park. Or else the little blond one is next.

"John?" Once again, his wife's voice brought him from his daze and back into the real world. "Why can't she have any chocolates? It's not like they're poisoned or anything "

Addison's comments faded in through one ear and out the other. His watch was already at a quarter 'til one, and the park was at least a twenty-minute walk. Adding that parcel to his jacket and nearly running out the door, John didn't bother explaining anything to the girls. There was no time for him to tell the whole story, and there was a good chance Addison would stop him in his tracks if she had known what he was about to do.

The park was packed. Even running to the park, there wasn't much time left for him to put this to rest. Flocks of people heading towards the London Zoo blocked his view, along with a rugby team headed the opposite way to the lake's edge. Unsure of where Richards would be waiting, John made his way through Queen Mary's gardens, knowing at least that Triton's fountain would be sparsely populated in the middle of the day.

Turned out he was right.

Jim Moriarty sat right in the middle of a bench, looking exactly the same as he had three years prior. Not even a gray hair on the man's head.

"So pleased you could join me," Jim teased, brushing an imaginary crease from his slacks as he stood. "Awful way of getting you here, I know, and I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings. I don't want to hurt little Rosemary; she's such a doll, isn't she? Lovely Addison, too, braiding the doll's hair and singing to her. Such a fairytale life, John."

"What do you want?" John spat, fury building up in his gut. This man knew details he would only know if he had been watching the house, watching the girls.

"Oh, no, John, you've got to be nice. You've got to play the game; otherwise you'll just end up losing. And you don't want that, do you?" His voice was teasing again, lilting around the words as if he was having the time of his life.

"What is it you want from me? What's the game?"

"Simple. You have the same choice your little friend had. See here, I have two puddings. One is mixed with laxatives, harmless but rather bothersome. The other is mixed with venom from an Inland Taipan I had imported from Australia."

"So you want to off me just like you off'd Sherlock?" John questioned, crossing his arms and stepping nearer to eye the aforementioned puddings. "How do I know they're not both poisoned?"

"Do you trust me so little, Johnny?" Jim feigned a pout, batting his eyelashes.

John studied them, only taking Moriarty at his word, knowing there was little way around this.

"Fine. And what if I say no?"

"I've got a sniper trained right through your front window, finger on the trigger. You can chose which he shoots first, if you'd like." The man's smirk made John's bones itch. This was it; there was no way around this. He nodded, closing his eyes and jabbing his finger in the direction of the left pudding.

John wrinkled his nose and took the plate, sniffing it warily. It smelled like any other ginger pudding he's ever had.

"Couldn't have been a jam roly poly," he sighed, trying to buy himself time. "You eat the other." The weak demand got him a shrug, and before he knew it, Moriarty was picking up the other plate and lifting it as a toast.

"To the end of an era?" He winked.

They took their bites at the same moment. Nothing happened.

For three minutes, they stood and stared at each other.

It was the fourth minute when the poison started to take effect, and one of the two dropped to his knees, face contorted with anguish. Jim Moriarty scratched at the ground, coughing and rapping at his chest. John watched on, knowing how the pain must have been, the feeling of flames clawing through Moriarty's veins.

In less than ten minutes, the man who had killed John's best friend was laying face first on the cold ground, fingers still clenching and unclenching, pitiful groans pouring from his chest.

John walked away knowing his nightmare had finally ended.

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A/N - There we go! It's a bit rushed, but I hope you enjoyed it. ALSO: Those of you waiting for an update on either Alice-verse or the Blaine Stark series, be patient! As soon as school ends (in a week and a half) I will put myself to work and pump out chapters for both of those, and hopefully some new fics as well.


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